Buffalo Flats
When seventeen-year-old Rebecca Leavitt believes she is sitting next to God on a rocky parcel of land, she is determined to buy this land even though it isn’t good for farming, and she’s not allowed to buy land anyway because she’s a woman. Her supportive family—Mormons who are homesteading on Alberta’s prairie after Utah became too crowded—come up with a plan for her to own the piece if she can earn the $480 needed to purchase it. Her friends, schoolmates, and older brothers are starting to get married, but she can’t decide between the dashing horse breeder Levi Howard, on whom a longtime rival has set her sights, or shy, thoughtful Coby Webster, the young farmer who owns the rights to the rocky parcel she wants to buy. Over the next year, floods, extreme cold, and sickness threaten Rebecca’s ambitions, as well as the very lives of the people she cares most about.
Buffalo Flats explores life on the prairies of western Canada in the 1880s through the eyes of an ambitious young woman who chafes against the rules governing her future, but also sees their importance. The gorgeous language conveys the beauty of the setting and the vulnerability of the humans who make it their home. Rebecca’s faith is tested but it remains strong, and she always returns to the embrace of family, community, and church. Leavitt’s novel, based on the stories of her husband’s family, shows a reverence for nature and her people, honoring the hardworking Mormon settlers from whom her family is descended six generations ago.
